Mappit.ai — every place has a story: the world's news on a live, interactive map

Mappit — every place has a story

The world's zeitgeist on a map. Mappit turns the world's news into a living, interactive map. An always-on news engine continuously reads what is happening in nearly two thousand places — its own crawler, which reads the world's publishers directly and supplies more than nine in ten new stories, working alongside frontier AI from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI in the jobs a crawler cannot do — and pins each story to the place it is about, on an interactive, time-aware map of the planet. Zoom into any city and you see what's happening there right now — grouped by topic, colored by mood, drawn only from publishers that clear a reliability bar and weighted toward the most trusted, marked with how many independent sources found it, and with every source link checked so the stories you read actually lead somewhere real. Scrub the calendar backwards and the map replays how the world looked on any past day, because each day's record is kept rather than replaced.

On top of that news layer, Mappit adds live views of the physical planet — earthquakes, wildfires, air quality, and weather — and a market layer that plots stock movements at companies' real headquarters. A built-in AI guide named Marco answers questions about any place and cites its sources — the news there and, from an atlas of open data, its population, borders and statistics, each figure with its year and source. Seven map apps show the numbers beside the news: they color the world's countries and America's states, counties and congressional districts by the economy, population, health, conflict and the 2026 US elections, from open data, and play them back through time. Anyone can browse for free; a subscription unlocks the ability to create and share your own places, collections, and data layers. And AI assistants can read Mappit directly: add https://mappit.ai/mcp to Claude, ChatGPT or another assistant, free and without an account.

The core idea is simple and durable: place + time is the most natural way to organize what is happening in the world, and the value compounds every day as the record grows. The map is the interface; the permanent, corroborated, geolocated corpus of world events beneath it is the substance.

Mappit requires JavaScript for the interactive map. Every public place, pin, collection and profile also has a crawlable page — see the sitemap.

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

What's happening in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso — 180 local stories, 0 community pins, live on the Mappit map.

Mappit's analysis

Geography & Setting

Ouagadougou sits on the central plateau of Burkina Faso, at the convergence of three rivers—the Nakanbé, Massili, and Tastaoua—in the heart of West Africa's Sahel region. This landlocked position, roughly 12°N of the equator, gives it a semi-arid climate with a distinct rainy season (May–September) and dry harmattan winds that define much of the year. The city sprawls across relatively flat terrain, making it accessible but also vulnerable to flooding during heavy rains.

History

Once a modest settlement, Ouagadougou became Burkina Faso's capital only in 1983, following Thomas Sankara's revolution. Before that, Bobo-Dioulasso held the title. The shift symbolized a political reorientation toward the geographic center and a break with colonial patterns. Today, the city bears the imprint of that revolutionary era alongside decades of steady urban growth—a palimpsest of independence, instability, and resilience.

People & Demographics

Home to approximately 3 million people, Ouagadougou is Burkina Faso's largest city and economic engine, though still modest by continental standards. It's a cosmopolitan hub where Mossi, Fulani, Bobo, and dozens of other ethnic groups coexist, with French and local languages woven into daily life. Young people dominate the demographics—Burkina Faso's population is among Africa's youngest—giving the city an entrepreneurial, restless energy.

Economy & Markets

Markets pulse at the city's heart. Ouagadougou's informal sector thrives—street vending, small trade, artisanal crafts—while formal commerce clusters in zones like Marché 10 Yaar, a sprawling commercial hub constantly negotiating between regulation and chaos. Recent enforcement operations targeting illegal occupations and counterfeit goods signal government efforts to formalize commerce, though the tension between order and the organic vitality of street markets remains persistent.

Culture & Character

Ouagadougou is a working city rather than a tourist spectacle. Its character emerges in neighborhood life, live music venues, the annual FESPACO film festival (one of Africa's premier cinema events), and the everyday choreography of navigating potholed streets and power outages. It's a place where Sahelian warmth and French colonial architecture coexist with modern aspiration—visible in new construction, tech startups, and youth-driven initiatives.

Current Currents

July 2026 finds the capital navigating significant shifts: a diplomatic rupture with France, intensified security operations at key markets, and new initiatives around road safety (video ticketing begins August 1st) and economic participation. Simultaneously, it hosts continental youth sports competitions—the U18 AfroBasket qualifiers—and supports microentrepreneur networks. These currents—sovereignty, order, modernization, inclusion—reveal a city actively reshaping itself.